


In the Woods

by sinigmas (jaystrifes)



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: A weird take on the forest in Gravity Falls, And whatever he is he's Dipper's age, Bill isn't a demon but he's not human either, Creepy stuff just in time for the season, M/M, here there be monsters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5102756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaystrifes/pseuds/sinigmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have seen what the darkness does,<br/>Say goodbye to who I was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taurine (Elentori)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elentori/gifts).



> Recommended listening: www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5axbaGBVto

At sixteen years old, Dipper has taken to venturing off on his own every now and then. It’s not that Mabel and their (hers, more than his) friends refuse to come with him anymore, so much as it is that he doesn’t want them to. They’ll never wholly understand his fascination with the mysteries of Gravity Falls, and he doesn’t expect them to at this point. He makes more progress on his own.

Today is one of the many days he’s spent mapping out the forest. It’s been done many times before, both by local residents and himself, but town maps are only vague guesswork and outlines, because nobody but Dipper seems to wander that far into the woods. His cartography is precise and detailed, and ever expanding. Some parts of the area he knows like the back of his hand, and others he has never seen.

There’s something weird about the deep forest, constantly shifting, opening and closing off sections of itself. No two trees are ever in the same spot. The only constants are on the fringes of it, closer to civilization, but within, the landscape changes as if it has a mind of its own. It does follow patterns, which Dipper has taken careful note of. Over the cycle of a week, it will rearrange itself eight times, and then revert to the original setting.

He can’t even try to explain it. He can only observe and scratch his head and ponder on it for hours.

Even weirder are the anomalous creatures he’s encountered within, some of which weren’t even recorded in the journals, from the relatively harmless gnomes and fairies to the rabid two-headed mixes of wolf and rabbit.

Dipper is in the process of sketching one such creature he’s captured when an unfamiliar noise distracts him. Naturally, there’s a tug in his gut that tells him to investigate it, but, gauging the sun’s position in the sky, he’s conflicted. He needs to finish up his drawing of what he laughingly named the ‘wabbit,’ and it’s nearly time to start the trek back home. All his expeditions on foot have strengthened his legs and built up his stamina, but even so, navigating his way out of the ever-changing forest can take a while. Dipper knows he has to allow enough time to walk back to the Mystery Shack before the sun fully sets. He’s never stayed out in the woods at night, nor does he want to.

Well. He’s considered an overnight adventure, but the truth is, he doesn’t dare. The forest is treacherous enough by daylight. Dipper can only imagine it in the dark.

Even so, his feet are already guiding him towards the source of the noise, leaving the caged beast behind. As he gets closer, he ducks behind the trees more stealthily, one hand resting on the knife he now keeps tucked in the back of his belt, after an incident with a hostile were-cat.

Peering around a trunk, Dipper finds his quarry curled up on the ground in between the roots of a pine tree, and he takes a step back out of sheer surprise. It’s not an animal, it’s a boy. Never in his four years of exploring has he encountered another living human this far out in the wilderness. Not that he’s come across dead ones: at least, not ones that haven’t decomposed.

He can’t remember words for a moment. The boy is rocking back and forth, arms clutched across his belly, face screwed up in pain. He twists over onto his hands and knees and rises halfway, coughing violently and retching up what looks like it might be either very dark blood or oil. With his head turned to the side, one of his eyes lands on Dipper, a vibrant hazel-gold color, but the other remains tightly closed.

Dumbly, Dipper asks, “Are you okay?”

Almost by way of response, the boy collapses on his front again. He’s quaking, sweat beading on his bare back and on his forehead, waves of blond hair all disorderly. He’s wearing only a pair of tattered brown shorts, cut raggedly at the knees, and his skin is richly tanned, his figure well-muscled but lithe, and there’s a dark outline etched into his back, a shape or tattoo of sorts. Dipper doesn’t have time to identify it.

He snaps himself into action, shrugging his pack off his shoulder and kneeling beside the boy, rummaging for anything that might be useful. The best he can find is a cloth and his canteen; he checks the stranger’s temperature, and even without doing it properly, he can tell he has a raging fever, so Dipper wets the cloth and lays it across his forehead.

“Who are you?”

Dipper’s aiming for a less obvious question now, although he’s not sure the boy is in any condition to answer him. Gently, he rolls him onto his back and puts a hand behind his neck to support his head, trying not to recoil at the cold sweat beneath his fingertips, tilting the canteen to let him have a drink.

When he’s had enough, he tries to sit up, pushing away from Dipper. “Bill,” he splutters, and it takes Dipper a moment to figure out that he means that’s his name. “You –” He hunches over in a fit of coughing, but he manages to get out another word. “Sunset.”

Dipper curses under his breath, because Bill’s right. It’s harder to tell with the thick branches and leaves all around, but the shadows of the trees are long and outstretched, and there’s fiery orange peeking up on the distant horizon beyond them. It will be gone in minutes, and where does that leave him, stranded in the dark woods with this half-dead stranger.

He has to get out of here, immediately. Forget the hybrid monster he caught, he doesn’t have time to go back and release it. But Bill is a different story. Dipper can’t just leave him.

“Come on,” he says, his voice quiet and calm, hoping to conceal the nerves twisting in his stomach. He can’t justify it with anything other than the idea of scarier monsters that come out in the dark, but he has a bad feeling, a nagging thought that it could be worse than that. There has to be a reason he felt compelled to write ‘Don’t go into the woods at night’ as the critical warning in invisible ink in his new journal (the fourth one, his own expansion of the author’s previous works), and like it or not he might find some evidence to back it up tonight.

Dipper hefts his pack and holds his hands out to Bill, pulling him to his feet, but Bill’s leg buckles and he has to catch him. He’ll go faster carrying the boy all on his own than having him limp alongside, so that’s what he does. Crouching a little, he helps Bill onto his back, supporting him under the legs and starting the long walk home.

Anxiety swells in his chest. He looks over his shoulder, past Bill’s head, and thinks he spots movement low to the ground, but there’s nothing there. With a growing sense of urgency, Dipper walks faster, adjusting Bill uncomfortably. He’s definitely weighing him down. Dipper stops and slides him off his back to pick him up and carry him in his arms instead, speeding up to a jog. There’s not much light left, everything shaded in the twilight, and he’s nowhere near the edge of the forest. Bill is panting, and he’s not even the one doing the running. He still looks vaguely feverish, one watering eye open and fixed on Dipper.

Even at his renewed pace, it’s another ten minutes before he gets into the part of the forest nearer the exterior, the part that doesn’t ever rearrange its borders, the part close to home and safety and Mabel, god, he wishes he had Mabel with him right now. Her unorthodox, upbeat nature and bad timing for jokes might really be appreciated. Dusk falls, the sky bleeding out all its reds and pinks into the horizon, giving way to blacks and purples.

Huffing and puffing, Dipper can’t go on without a quick break. He kneels and deposits Bill on the ground as gently as he can, and sits back with his hands clasped behind his head, trying to maximize the amount of air to his lungs. His arms burn from carrying the other boy, even though he’s relatively light. More than anything he’s tired. Some of it is physical, to be sure, but there’s also another strange weariness sitting heavy on his shoulders, a mix of worry and uncertainty and fear that he’s not sure is entirely under his control.

He knows he’s not hearing things. Or maybe he is, but he’s hearing _things_ that are actually there. Low, mournful howls, and sibilant hissing, and syncopated chirruping and buzzing. A scratch here, a thump there. The eeriest thing is that it’s all so faint that it feels distant, yet it’s all around him.

They’re well and truly in the dark now. Stars must be dotting the sky, but Dipper can’t see them from this angle, and there’s no hope for light from the moon because it’s waned to almost a sliver.

He wonders what his family is doing. If they even notice his absence.

Thinking about his current relationships doesn’t make him feel any better about himself as a person, but it’s nicer than the alternative of thinking about how likely he is to die tonight. He lifts Bill again and resumes his pace, pushing it a little. He just wants to get home, to maybe fall into his twin’s arms the way he hasn’t in a long time. There are fundamental differences between Dipper and Mabel, which may have contributed to the widening gap between them, but more than anything it’s Dipper’s fault for starting to push her away. They made it work when they were twelve, didn’t they? It’s ridiculous, how four years have separated them so much.

He’d give anything to hear her incessant chatter right about now. Maybe she’d be loud enough to prevent the woodland monsters from trying anything. She’d be interrogating poor Bill, whether he could answer or not.

Dipper badly wants to slow down again, take another break, but he knows the more he does that, the harder it gets to continue. He’s close to the more stable part of the forest now, close to freedom from the oppressing air of the deep woods. Keep going, keep going. He cannons through the foliage, his heart flitting like a caged bird, no longer mindful of any creatures he might be alerting.

Bill isn’t quite limp, but he looks like a ragdoll, his head bouncing with the hurried drumming of Dipper’s feet. He can tell he’s getting weaker and weaker. Even if Dipper can get him back to the Mystery Shack in time, what’s going to become of him? Is he actually sick, or just injured? Is anybody going to be able to help him?

Keep going. The goal is to get them both there alive. What happens after that will happen.

Hope rises in his chest as he spots the noticeable change in the trees up ahead. They’re thinning, wider spaces between them. Officially not the dark woods. There’s even a definite contrast between the lighting in the regular woodland and the part of the forest he’s leaving. Almost there.

That’s when trouble starts, of course.

The wind picks up without warning, and there’s a kind of cold in it that he can’t blame on the night air. The trees around him don’t even rustle. Dipper reprimands himself for slowing down the way he did, distracted by his curiosity. Now isn’t the time. As long as he can get to that dividing point between the two sections of the forest, he’ll be fine. Can’t stop moving.

So why are his feet firmly in place on the ground? Trying to lift them makes him feel like he has a ball and chain tied to both ankles.

No, no. Dipper adjusts his hold on Bill, who is still feeble and unhelpful. He pulls him close protectively, trying to take comfort in the warmth of another human, but Bill’s body temperature is higher than he expected, almost too hot. Every second he tries to hang on to him makes Dipper’s arms heavier and heavier.

He tries to push through the murk, the icy wind, the dread. A few steps, no farther, and then he’s fallen to one knee, hunched over Bill, shivering with trepidation. He doesn’t know what’s behind him, but he knows it’s nothing good. There’s a sound, a haunting whistle of a tune he’s heard before, drawing nearer and nearer.

Dipper doesn’t care what it is, doesn’t care how hard it is to move his leaden limbs. His sister would tell him to get up off his butt and run for his life like a sensible person, and that’s what he does. He sprints for the edge of the darkness, focused on the more open area beyond. A few more bounds, just a few more, and he almost dares to believe he’ll make it.

A root snags his foot.

He crashes to the ground, twisting to bear the worst of it on his side and keep Bill’s body out of the way, but he loses control and Bill slips from his arms while he keeps tumbling forwards. Finally, he skids to a halt just short of the safe boundary. The hard landing opens a scrape on his elbow and scratches his chin, and there are scuffs of dirt all over him, but despite his aches, Dipper forces himself to sit up. He could crawl a few feet and he’d be free from whatever malevolent thing is back there, but…

“Bill!” he calls hoarsely, squinting to find out where the boy ended up. It’s hard to see, but he finally picks out a prone form a few feet back. There’s no answer.

Forward, or back? It could mean his life. If he leaves now, he’ll make it back home, but he’ll live with this helpless guilt and terror forever.

Not only did he lose Bill in the fall, but also his pack, full of supplies and maps and notes. Panic grips him like a vice.

Back it is, then.

Heart thumping at a rate of no less than 200 beats per minute, Dipper crawls on his hands and knees. It feels like he barely needs to make the effort, like the gravitational pull of the darkness will suck him in either way. Something’s out there, and not as far away as he’d like. He’s not sure he even wants to know what it is.

Pitch-black, it stands out even in the gloom of the deep forest, and a blur of movement catches Dipper off guard, snaking towards him. He can’t even scream, too chilled to disrupt the absolute silence that has fallen. He can’t hear the other woodland monsters, everything is so consumed by this unsettling force. The solid shadow is three feet away when something else gets his attention, freeing him from the frozen terror, if only for an instant.

Bill is sitting up, hands outstretched, and both of his eyes are open. Tongues of gold and blue fire twirl around him in a whirlwind, finally shedding some light on the area, and the dark thing shrinks back, pooling with the natural shadows behind trees that the flames’ glow can’t reach.

Mesmerized, Dipper stares at the eye that had been closed. The pupil is a yellow pinpoint, surrounded by a black sclera. Upon closer inspection, he realizes it’s more than black, it’s spangled with a myriad of stars and faint nebular bursts of color. Who is this boy? _What_ is he?

“Time is ticking,” he grits out, reminding Dipper that he can actually speak. It’s an odd way of phrasing it, but he has a point.

Dipper scrambles to grab his pack, and hesitantly approaches Bill. The fire doesn’t give off any heat, but it might still burn. Bill looks up at him, his odd eye twitching shut, and all the light flickers out with it. Dipper catches him before he can completely hit the ground, hauling him towards the edge of the forest. This time, he doesn’t wait for the shadow to come after them again, even once he’s in what would normally be the safe zone, because that thing was far from normal even by monster standards.

Hoarsely, he calls for help as he drags Bill up the porch steps and throws open the door. Bill is coughing nastily again, and retches that awful putrid-smelling black stuff again, and even after he gets some of it out of his lungs and all over Dipper’s shoes, he keeps convulsing so violently that Dipper almost can’t hold him up.

“What’s going on in – sweet Moses,” Grunkle Stan breathes when he catches sight of his bedraggled nephew and the sick boy.

He rushes to help with Bill, saying something about taking him upstairs to the twins’ bedroom, but Dipper barely hears it through the tinny ringing in his right ear. Exhausted, he collapses in the doorway, trembling, starting to feel a little sick himself. Stan turns back for him, but then his sister is there.

“Mabel,” Dipper whispers, tears springing to his eyes unbidden. He’s never been so glad to see her.

“You’re looking pale, bro-bro,” she says with concern, taking in the black gunk on Dipper’s sneakers and the rips in his clothing and pack. He’s covered in scrapes. “What happened?”

“I…I don’t…”

He can’t stop shaking, but at least the nausea has died down some. Maybe he should feel afraid, after that, but he’s just relieved he made it of the woods alive, relieved he’s here with Mabel. He himself has so many questions about what happened, but right now he’s too exhausted to even try to hold them in his mind. Now that the adrenaline’s worn off, Dipper just wants to sleep for a very long time.


End file.
